Archive for July, 2010

Introduction:
Scripture reading: Acts 17:24, 26, 27 – God made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of Heaven and Earth. And he made of one blood, all nations of people to dwell on all the earth, and determined the places where they would live; that they should seek the Lord and find Him…
In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a national holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

Song: My Country Tis of Thee

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. Audriaanna Mattox:
Nearly a century later, the war for freedom continued on this continent. During this time, President Abraham Lincoln prayed to God to end slavery in America. In his prayer, he asked God that if slavery was wrong, to please allow the North to win the war. The North won, and on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln was a leader with the heart of an abolitionist. The battle for freedom still continues today, with the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that Protestant and Catholics and Gentiles and Jews will sing “Free at Last” together. We must remember that all of this started with the prayers of the Founding Fathers of America.
Along with the Founding Fathers usually listed in history books, a notable African American John Hanson is sometimes listed as one of the Founding Fathers, along with James Armistead and Peter Salem. Also, other notable Blacks such as Benjamin Banneker and Crispus Atticus are credited with helping to establish our nation’s independence. This year during the Juneteenth Celebration, honoring Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 which officially takes place today in 36 states in America, members of Congress and former Black Congressman J. C. Watts recognized the work of Black slaves in building our nation’s Capitol. So today, we celebrate the ongoing march towards true liberty for all Americans, born and unborn.
Please join us now in reciting the Declaration of Independence:
All: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Song:
Lift Every Voice and sing

African-American Founding Fathers! A suppressed history -Fox news

Peter Salem

Glenn Beck has been looking at the founders of American on “Founders Friday.” This week, he and some historians looked at black Americans who were present at the founding of America and had important roles in our country’s independence.

One of those was Peter Salem , who can be found in a painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In the painting of the Battle of Lexington, the people assembled here are members of Rev. Jonas Clark’s congregation. They were a congregation of both black and white Americans. One of those men was Prince Estabrook, a black American.

Remember the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware? Near the front of the boat you will see Prince Whipple helping row the boat, as well as a woman. All Americans were involved in winning our independence.

There is another painting of Marquis de Lafayette, the Frenchman who so greatly helped George Washington with our troops, and James Armistead . Armistead was an American double-spy who helped get information from the British and feed them bad information about us. His service was pivotal to our success at the Battle of Yorktown…which effectively won the American Revolution for us.

One of the guests on Beck’s show was David Barton, founder of WallBuilders and author of “American History in Black and White.” Another was Dr. Lucas Morel, a professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia and author of “Lincoln’s Sacred Effort.” Barton goes into greater detail about Armistead’s role in American history, as well as the friendship between Lafayette and Armistead.

Barton also talked about Wentworth Cheswell, who is considered the first black American elected to public office. We all know about Paul Revere’s famous ride warning that the British were coming, but Cheswell rode in another direction to give the same warning.

At one point, Barton points out that obviously at some point in history, since many of these black founders show up in various paintings of the Revolution, we knew about the role of black Americans in our founding. Somewhere along the way, like many historical facts, this has been forgotten.

There is also considerable discussion of Frederick Douglass, who is better known in history and someone Beck calls a “re-founder.” Barton says Douglass once believed the “Three-Fifths Compromise ” was a terrible affront to enslaved black Americans and that it rendered the U.S. Constitution totally corrupt. However, when he studied the Constitution along with the notes from the Constitutional Convention, he realized it was an anti-slavery document.

The bulk of the founders recognized that slavery was wrong and was counter to the ideals of freedom upon which the American Revolution was based. However, there were some in the South who wanted to preserve slavery in the United States, and the impasse threatened the union of our fledgling nation. As a compromise, they came up with the idea of counting slaves as “three-fifths” for the purposes of representation and apportionment.

If a slave was not worthy of freedom like any other American, then he should not really be counted for the purposes of representation and apportionment. Of course, the Southern states saw how this would hurt them in the federal government, so they compromised by counting slaves at three-fifths of a free person. It made it harder for pro-slavery states to get as much representation in congress; thus the anti-slavery states would have greater representation in apportionment…and in making laws for the nation in general. This gave the Southern states an incentive to free their slaves so that their overall population numbers would increase and thus give the Southern states greater representation and apportionment.

Of course, the truth doesn’t fit the liberal narrative of America as an evil place, a place founded by evil rich slave-owning white guys (and there is some truth to that: some founders were wealthy, and some did own slaves) that has always been a place of great inequality. The truth doesn’t advance the culture of victimhood promoted by the modern Left in America. The reality of our history–both good and bad–must be sanitized and revised and rewritten, therefore, in order for the Left to fundamentally alter our present and future public policy.

People like Lemuel Haynes (as well as some of these other black American historical figures) throw a lot of water on that revisionist narrative, however. Haynes was a black American, born to a white woman and a black man. He became a minister and pastored a church with a white congregation, and also fought in the militia in the American Revolution. Barton says that he always preached a special sermon about George Washington on Washington’s birthday every year.

There was Benjamin Banneker, a black American who was involved in the planning of Washington D.C. and was said to be very intelligent and involved with building clocks and predicting eclipses. – Dakotavoice.com